Myth-busters: Growth apart from the Word

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

The Myth of Christian Growth Apart from the Word

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Today is Tuesday and we continue with the theme. Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order. And today it's with Steve Cooley, because I don't need to interject and inject provocative stuff when I have Steve here, because he is provocation incarnate.

Wow, how did you get Steve Cooley to do your show? That's really a good get, you know, as we say, in the business. That's a good get.

Because then when I need my buttons turned here for guest, host, caller on the mixing board, Steve, could you get that for me? Absolutely.

Absolutely. You know what I was thinking? What if I, you know, on the other days of the week, if you want to do a call-in show, I could just like alter my voice and I could be your caller.

I just be the setup guy. What do you think? I think that'd be perfect, because I feel like I've been set up lately and it would work out perfectly. See what they don't know is, you know, we work together and I guess technically I'm your boss.

And when I ask you to do something, what do I almost always say 99 of the time? Could you please do such and such? I could just say, as your boss, do such and such, but I just say, could you please do it?

And what do I say 99 of the time? Do it yourself. Right? And in Christian love and submission.

It could be the new YOLO, you know, now it's in Christian love, NCL.

And I mean this, in all Christian love. Because if you preface it with, in all Christian love, you can say whatever you want.

These days it's hard for, I mean, I make my living as I speak and preach and talk, but I'm kind of wanting to hit the mute button lately.

Really? Yeah. You've heard yourself enough, is that what you're trying to say? Well, that's true too. There might be a few people in the congregation feeling the same way. Can I just sit here and hit the mute button?

Can you imagine just having to listen to the same pastor over and over, week after week, year after year? No wonder there's the 16-year itch. Strangely, I can imagine that. Strangely. Well, I guess if you have MacArthur or something, you can always listen to John first before you go to your regular church service.

Well, especially if I'm at some churches where I just need to get fed and hear the Word.

Speaking of the Word, today. Mythbusters, part cinco. Cinco, is that the word? Cinco de mito.

Cinco de mito. What's the word for myth? Many things I do know, this I do not know.

Well, we could do Google Translate, but there's no need. Myths that Christians are tempted to believe. We thought that would be a good series, because it would just go on and on forever and ever.

I think it's great. I mean, I think we could write a book of Christian mythology.

Oh, there's a book. I think that's on the best e-Kindle seller.

Well, you know, when I was a kid, I used to go to the library, the school library all the time, and read mythology, Greek mythology, Roman mythology. I loved that. I didn't know that. Yeah. You used to do that.

I mean, I can remember doing it third, fourth grade.

I can never keep the people straight, because I didn't know if it was a Greek name or Latin name or something else, and I couldn't figure it out that some of these people were the same guys. Yeah, I couldn't either, but I just liked it.

It was fun. Zeus. Steve, the myth today is that Christians are tempted to believe, and of course, we want you to do the opposite of the myth, and we want to just work through this, and we're trying to just stay one step ahead of Crisis Center and White Horse Inn, shows like that.

Yeah, they got nothing on us. The myth that you shouldn't believe is that Christians can grow, slash, mature, apart from the Word. Christian growth apart from the Word.

Yeah, you know, I mean, people go on retreats and stuff like that, and it was a time of remarkable spiritual growth, and then you say, what? Well, oh, cool. What book did you study there? Well, I think it was a book on marriage by some psychologist.

Secular psychologist.

Dr. Ruth or something. I don't know. What were some of those books a long time ago published that were big on the circuit, the retreat circuit? Not the secret, but stuff like that.

I don't know. I must have missed those retreats.

Now, speaking of retreats and your background being a Mormon, what would a Mormon retreat be like? What would you do?

Just a lot of fun activity. I mean, there wouldn't be much particularly spiritual going on. I mean, I'm sure we would have sacrament, because sacrament is just something—sacrament is what we would call the Lord's table.

Water, by the way, and bread. I did not know that.

Water. Yes. So that's way before the Methodist pastor, Welch.

Water, water, water, water, water. Well, I mean, it's a sin to drink wine, and so we would certainly never do that. What about the—? Avoid the very appearance of evil.

Oh, so, okay, see, all right.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. I can remember as a 14-year-old, 13—well, 14 and 15-year-old, used to fill those communion trays up, although we didn't—you know, again, they were sacrament trays—with water, because you had little tiny paper cups, and yep, we did all that stuff.

Dixie cup. And tear the bread up.

We would tear the bread up, too. Yeah, tear. That'd be better than having the prefab things. Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay. Good. Did I tell you the story when I was in India with Communion, and I was at a liberal church, and I preached, preached a message, Ephesians 2, two-part sermon.

Bad news, good news. Oh, that's a good—two parts, yeah. Bad news without Jesus, good news with Jesus. That is good, yeah. And then they asked me to help serve Communion, and so I just wanted to help, and so I was supposed to give the bread to people, and then I was supposed to say, the body of Christ given for you.

And so I would just do that. I was trying to help. I didn't have time to work through, is this pagan? Are these people Christians? I just was asked to serve, so I thought I'd just better do it. Okay. I just got done preaching a sermon about Jesus.

Maybe everybody got converted while I was preaching, so now I'm—. Excellent. Wow. And I would give them the bread, and they would look at me afterward with a look of, this is not complete. Something is left undone.

And I'd go to the next person, body of Christ given for you, and I kind of felt like I was back in a Lutheran church, you know?

What did they want you to do, smack their forehead or something? No.

They wanted me to, when I put the bread into their hand, the little matzah thing into their open hand, into the palm of their hand, they wanted me to take my thumb and crush it, because Christ's body was crushed on our behalf.

And so I was supposed to crush it, and so I think I probably gave it out to 40 people before I got the—.

So did you have to quick go back and crush everybody's—. In my mind I did. Okay.

Steve, there are people who don't think you can grow from the Word, not mentally. They'd say, yes, of course you have to have the Word. But I'm thinking things not only like retreats, but how about getting slain in the Spirit?

Oh, yeah. People struggle with sin. They have a desire to want to obey and to, in light of the cross, please the Lord through obedience. As a child would please a father, and they want to learn and grow, and they struggle.

It's hard to deny yourself. It's hard to love your wife as Christ loved the church. It's hard to do a lot of the Christian discipline, so it's impossible by yourself. But it's difficult so you think, well, if I just go up to the front of the church and I have a special prayer, and the guy takes my head and pushes his hand in there, over there, on there.

That just sounds painful, like open brain surgery, you know.

Maybe my ministry at the church could be a catcher. Yeah.

You have to have big guys for that. I've been and I've seen those kind of services, and they're really kind of horrifying if you're not part of them. But, you know, all that stuff, what is that? You know, it's from one mountaintop experience to the next one.

I remember when a group of guys, years ago, they wanted to get together. They were looking for some knucklehead to be the fourth person in a promise keepers group. And so, you know, I said I would.

And some knucklehead. In Christian love.

Yeah. Well, it was me. I was the knucklehead. And so, you know, so the four of us got together and, you know, I think we read the book one time and then we were just like, we're, you know, that book was lame, but that's a masculine journey.

I was a promise keepers. But, you know, these guys had come back so fired up from the promise keepers event. And that's what so many Christians today are living is that kind of peak to peak to peak to peak life.

And if they don't have those experiences, then they're really in the doldrums and they feel dry and empty. And so now they're looking for the next big experience.

Maybe that's why they should come to the Omaha Bible Church. Pastor Pat Abendroth speaking at Bethlehem Bible Church Conference, October 4th and 5th.

You know what? That's going to be a mountaintop experience in a couple of different ways. One is it's just going to be fun. But the second way is you're actually going to hear something that's going to help you, which is called the Bible.

Preaching about Jesus Christ's center. I think he's the center of heaven, so he should probably be the center of our worship on earth, don't you think?

Why wouldn't he be? And yet, you know, he's not in many churches. In fact, when people come home from a church and they say, you know, how was church? Is that even the right question? It should be more like, what was the sermon about?

What did you learn? What were you convicted of?

What did you, you know? How about this, Steve? I don't know. I'm sure somebody else has already said this, but when people talk about how is church, we should say, how godly was your worship today? How sacrificial was your giving?

How intent on obeying the calls from scripture that were preached were you?

How intense was your worship? Yeah, because what people typically do is they go and they're, I don't even know, how many times do people go to church and they can't remember anything that they've heard?

You know, I don't remember. One of the things I like about taking notes, and one of the reasons why I will still frequently take notes, is so that I have to be engaged. And I think too many people are just passive, you know, and they're maybe get off into daydreaming.

If I'm not actively writing things down, my mind can wander too. And I don't want it to wander. I want to be focused on what I'm hearing.

Plus, if you have to hear me preach two times every Sunday, it's good to take notes. Well, that gets really rough, yeah.

Actually, I'm always interested to see what the differences are between the two sermons.

And you have to admit, they're great at times. You mean the sermons or the changes? No, the changes are great in number. And I say that in Christian love. Uh-huh. I-C-L. All right, here's the verse that we have today.

It says, so put away, 1 Peter 2, all malice, and all deceit, and hypocrisy, and envy, and all slander. I'd just like to say amen right there. Go ahead. I know. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it, that is the word, but the pure milk, pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

Don't really like the SV version there, but that's life. So the point is, if you'd like to grow, Peter says, when you come to the word, get rid of all the sin first, from malice to slander and everything in between, and then like a newborn babe, come to the word and just devour it, and to drink it in, and to just satiate.

Is that a word? Satiate? Yes, it is. Oh, to sate? Satisfy. Yeah, just be satisfied with the word of God, and that you may, as the NAS says, that you may grow in regard to it by it. How does that work?

Well, while you're saying that, you know, if I could just say—.

By it you may grow in respect to salvation. Well, there you go.

And, you know, just a word about that. Sometimes, do you ever hear a sermon and you think, well, I didn't learn anything today? Well, sometimes, may I just say, in all Christian love, that sometimes the goal isn't necessarily to learn something.

Is it just possible that as you listen, that there is something the Holy Spirit would impress upon you that you stand guilty of, that you need to repent of, or something in your life that you need to change, or you might please the Lord better in doing something differently than what you're doing now?

And I'm just like, so the idea that we constantly have to be learning, that's not the idea. We're there to worship. We're there to be refined. You know, Jesus said in John 17, sanctify them in truth. Thy word is truth.

We are to sit under the word, and it has a sanctifying effect on us.

Steve, when I was younger, to me, the sine qua non of a good sermon was that I learned something new. That is to say, I thought, this is really a great sermon because I just learned a new truth that I didn't know about before, and I really thought then that was a good sermon.

Well, then you mature in the faith, some, and are maturing, and then you think, well, I already knew about that truth, but it was good to be reminded of that. Actually, some of my favorite sermons that I hear are not the ones where I'm learning something, but that I think I already know the passage and have preached it myself, but then the Lord uses someone else to preach it, and then it really affects the way I think, and it affects me to repent, or to praise, or something like that.

We are to remind people of the truths, and in 1 Peter, 2 Peter, remind them, remind them, remind them. Recall this.

And why is that? It's because we forget, you know, especially how easy is it to remember the sins that we've committed and everything else, and how hard is it to remember the things that we really want to remember, and if you don't believe that, when was the last time you forgot your anniversary or somebody's birthday or something like that?

Well, it says in the NAS, Steve, like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. So I don't know if you know this or not, Steve, but I'm still preaching from the ESV.

We have the ESV pew Bible, but I'm really NASB only, I'm an NASB only guy. Really?

So the translators who worked on that were inspired?

Yeah, well, not from the 77, 78 stuff, but the NAS 95 only. Okay, the NAS update. Yes. Yeah. In all honesty, though, it is easier for me to memorize out of the NAS because it's just a little clunkier, because I think it's more reflective of the Greek, and if the Greek has a few clunks in it, to my mind as an American, I can just pick up memory easier out of the NAS.

Yeah, I mean, in some ways it's kind of like a loud lawnmower, and it just sort of helps you in that respect. I know, I know.

Well, is there a reason why we have the No Compromise studio up against the window here so we can spy those outside?

Yes, there is. It's because we have no budget.

A Regular Bible Reading Plan

All right, so let's talk about growth. We know, if you're listening to No Compromise Radio, that you would like to grow. You want to grow in respect to salvation. You'd like to mature. You'd like to be stronger against temptations.

You'd like to be quicker to confess. There's lots of ways you can measure growth, and so we encourage you to listen to shows like this and others, but we want you to have a regular Bible reading plan.

It sounds weird, but some Christians don't really read their Bible throughout the week like they should. Steve, give us what you do to read the Bible, and maybe they could pick up some of your do's or don'ts or something like that, and then I'll tell the listeners what my strategy is, because if you have no aims, you're sure to hit them.

It's guaranteed. I basically will work my way through a book, and usually I'll focus, I'll spend a lot of time, obviously, on the book that I'm teaching because I really want to understand the flow of thought, but I think it's good.

I'll usually read a book through a couple of times in a row before I move on to another book, because even as I read through the second or the third time, I'll go, why didn't I see that the first time?

And I'll tell you why I didn't see it the first time or the second time. It's because my mind, just like when I'm listening to a sermon, my mind will sort of wander, and then I wander back. It's like when you read any book, but you really want to mine the truths out of Scripture, and so that's just, that's how I do it.

Steve, I have the same approach, and these days, I mean, I try to read some Psalms and Proverbs here or there, but I usually have a book, and it's about five chapters or so, so if it's Romans, I would just do the first five chapters, following what MacArthur taught years ago, and just pick a book, and then for about a month, sometimes I do it a little less, sometimes a little bit more, I just try to read that book every day, and then if I don't, then I have to deny myself dinner and some other things, so that's the...

For me, it's peanut butter. Oh, Steve, why is that? When I'm at, when it's at night, and I'd like a little snack, and I know we've got, we have a variety of different peanut butters there. We've got kind of the cheap stuff for the kids, huge jar, we've got some organic stuff for more natural, it's in the refrigerator, and what I love to do is I love to take some jam, some of the no-sugar jam, and then a little bit of the peanut butter, and I just want to just take a big old tablespoon, but it's probably 200 calories a tablespoon.

Is it really? Yeah. Super bad. Actually, all I've been doing lately is I just, occasionally, I just go, you know when I want a snack, I'll just have a spoonful of peanut butter, so that's just what I do.

It's better than a candy bar, probably.

I'm afraid probably is, although I could take a big spoon of peanut butter and stir it into some vanilla bean ice cream, that'd be fine. That's right. So what I'm doing now is I'm studying 1 Peter, and even though I'm preaching out of Romans on Sunday mornings, I'm just trying to read 1 Peter every day, mostly in the NAS, but quite a few ESV, I've read it in the King James, New King James, and I just keep reading it over and over, and then I'm seeing, Steve, those kind of things.

So for instance, at the end of chapter 1, it says, all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of the grass. The grass withers, the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever, and this is the good, this is, see I'm doing NAS reading ESV, and this word is the good news that was preached to you, then we don't get the chapter break if we just keep reading, so put away all malice and then desire the pure milk of the word.

And so it just leads right into it, and I like to see the chapter connections. I have to tell you, Steve, one of my favorite moments with studying the Bible is to catch the nuances of the chapter break doesn't exist, get it out of my mind, see the flow so I can understand God's Word better.

I love that. It really is encouraging, and that's what I mean by studying, you know, and getting the author's kind of mindset, because what we don't understand, certainly I didn't understand when I was an unbeliever, is that these chapter breaks and verse breaks didn't exist.

You know, they were imposed later on in the Scripture. We tend to think that, you know, Peter sat down with 1 Peter and he said, you know, wrote across the top of the page, 1 Peter, then, you know, chapter 1, verse 1, but it wasn't that way at all.

You know, it was just one long, big bunch of letters, actually, because paper was expensive. But yeah, that is one of the blessings now that we get to do that, that we can go back and study it that way and think about it that way as just what it was, one, you know, long book without all these breaks, and kind of what is that—what do we even see?

Sometimes the breaks are really bad. I mean, they're exceptionally bad. They come like right in the middle of a thought, you know, so—.

Psalm 119 and the Need for Remembrance

Steve, when I'm feeling down in the doldrums spiritually and not really wanting to read my Bible, I regularly go to Psalm 119, because then in this longest psalm in the Scripture, I forgot how many— 176 verses?

You are right, 176. Written in an acrostic form with the 22 letters of the Greek alphabet lining them up, how can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. My soul clings to the dust, verse 25, give me life according to your word.

Strengthen me according to your word. I cling to your testimonies and enlarge my heart. And I'm just skipping around reading a few verses that encourage me to say when I'm weak and when I'm struggling, I need to go to the Word and look what the Word does.

Well, and what it always does is point to us to a few things. One is just how faithful God is. You know, we'll see that over and over again. Just his steadfast love. You know, I really love what the NAS does when they lump love and kindness all together.

Sadly, it's, I think, missing a lot from the ESV, but just things like that. We need to focus our minds on what is true and right and not what is bothering us, afflicting us at the moment. So yeah, I think that's very key.

And it's also good for us to just recall, I mean, even if we're reading something like Ephesians 2, when I read that, I think this is my biography. You know, this is me. I was dead. You know, this isn't something I just preach on Sundays or I love to just tell people that they're dead and their sins and trespasses.

It's good for me, because when I think about it that way, I just look at what God has done and I'm stunned. And this encourages me, because I'm like, well, you know what, as bad as I may think I have it at the moment, it could be a lot worse.

I could be Christless. You know, I could be without hope.

Growth Through the Word, Prayer, and Gospel Ministry

So true. We're wrapping up the show today on, if you'd like to grow in Christianity, you have to study the Word. God has ordained your growth, but he has ordained it through the means of the Word. Of course, through prayer and gospel ministry and evangelism, there's other ways in which you grow, but you grow through the Word.

And so we want you to be people who aren't lazy, who want to study. Show me a Christian biography about a great saint, a saint that God made great, and I'll show you somebody who studies the Bible. What's the common denominator?

Jesus Christ saved them and they have a hunger for the Word.

Because then they're enabled to say, I'm a great sinner and I have a great Savior. If you don't kind of keep that in your mind, you'll forget it. And you know, when do we run into our most difficult situations as Christians?

When we forget what we deserve and we forget what God has given us instead. Mike Abendroth here with Steve Cooley.

We're talking about growing in the Word. And so if you have a hard time studying the Bible, why don't you just wake up about 15 minutes early, grab your cup of coffee, get the Word, and start to read it.

Have a plan. Say, this month it's going to be 1 Peter, or Ephesians. And don't start in numbers. We started reading numbers last night around the dinner table, but I skipped ahead to chapter eight because there's a lot of numbering stuff and people and names and all that.

But once you hit eight and then nine into the Passover, it's pretty amazing. Yeah.

Can you imagine reading? You know, my reading plan for this month is I'm going to read numbers one to seven over and over again.

Yeah. It's like the dad who says, I don't really do much family Bible study, but I'm finally going to start. Kids, let's go numbers chapter one. I admire the guy, but if you're just starting and you're not Joel Beeky, then maybe you try with numbers nine first.

Yeah. I think you want to encourage your kids, not discourage them.

The Word of God matures. We're thankful for that.

NoCompromiseRadio .com. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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